Everywhere God: Exploring the Ordinary Places

By Alicia Brummeler

Awesome. Amazing. The Best Ever.  If we are honest with ourselves, we have all wanted—even longed for—these types of moments in life at some point. This natural human desire seeps into our faith journeys too. We want the mountaintop experiences with God and to sense His presence in bright, tangible ways. But real life and real faith are far more about ordinary living and faithfulness than they are about experiencing one WOW moment after the next.

Alicia Brummeler challenges readers to stop waiting for the extraordinary by recognizing how ordinary life is a pathway for encountering God. She provides practical tools for meeting God anytime, anywhere.

Everywhere God (175 pages) is Alicia's story of finding God in everyday life. From her days as a young wife and mother to her days as a mother of teenagers while juggling a teaching career, Alicia chronicles her discoveries in an accessible, engaging manner. She shows readers that experiencing God's presence isn't another task to accomplish, but a way of looking at daily life and recognizing God in the midst of it.

Alicia Brummeler is an author and speaker who also teaches middle school English at The Stony Brook School on Long Island, NY. She and her husband Brad have two young-adult children.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alicia Brummeler
• Release date: Jun 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393291305

Alicia Brummeler

Alicia Brummeler is an author and speaker who also teaches middle school English at The Stony Brook School on Long Island, NY. She and her husband Brad have two young-adult children.

Book preview

A BEGINNING

So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering.

—Romans 12:1 (The Message)

I WAS 20 WHEN I MARRIED. I knew I loved my husband and God, but I knew very little about myself. Like many young adults, my twenties were growing years. Suddenly, I was figuring out how to manage a household, work a full-time job, grocery shop and budget, be a wife, daughter-in-law, eventual mother, and, oh yes, grow closer to God too. I wanted more to my spiritual life than weekly church services and a smattering of Bible reading and prayer. Something was missing, but I still couldn’t conceptualize my spiritual life as anything but another item on my to-do list. Daily devotions—check. Attend church—check. Bring snack to small group—check. There was spiritual growth in one compartment, and then there was the rest of my life. The part of me that worked a full-time job, navigated married life, and cooked dinner each night felt more like the real me. Was this how grown-up faith looked? Did I need to adjust my expectations?

My faith journey began when I was a young child, about five years old. My childhood was happy and looked normal, but I certainly had some bizarre, irrational fears. After watching an episode of The A-Team in which a motorcycle gang takes over a small town, I was convinced that every motorcycle rider was out to take over my small town too. Once, on a long car trip, I saw a group of motorcycle riders on the road. I crouched down in the back seat of our car, thinking that if they couldn’t see me they wouldn’t hurt me or my family. Though now I laugh at my silly fears, they were a real part of my childhood and they left their mark on my impressionable mind. As a child, I also feared dying and going to hell and it was this fear that prompted me, in part, to faith. I remember sitting in my mom’s lap and hearing the news that I did not have to dread death or hell because of what Jesus had done for me. Together we prayed and I accepted Jesus as my Savior. A sense of peace and relief washed over me that night as I fell asleep.

Though I remember deciding to trust in Jesus, I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t a Christian. I attended Sunday school and Vacation Bible School as a young child, and youth group and church camp as a teenager, growing in knowledge and in faith. When I became a student at Taylor University, my favorite weeks of the year were Spiritual Renewal Weeks. During those chapel services and evening sessions I prayed earnestly for a God encounter. I depended on the spiritual highs to carry me through the rest of the semester.

It wasn’t until my twenties, as a newlywed and a young, working woman that I began to wonder why my spiritual life felt segmented: sacred on the one side, secular on the other side.

Real life didn’t have Spiritual Renewal Weeks.

This realization made me disappointed and even a bit fearful. Being an adult didn’t look nearly as inviting as it used to. How was I to bring together these two parts of my life—my faith and everything else? I couldn’t shake the niggling sense that there was more to the Christian life than weekly small group and church attendance. But I didn’t see a way forward. If you had asked me, List the ways a person can experience God’s presence, reading a novel or working in the yard would not have occurred to me. My list would have included activities like going to church or participating in a Bible study because that was all I knew. How relieved I was to find that I was wrong! Little did I know that in small, barely discernible ways, my journey towards encountering God in the everyday was about to begin. Looking back, I realize that while I heard all truth is God’s truth in church and at university, it had not yet moved from an intellectual understanding to a tangible reality in my life.

EARLY IN MY MARRIAGE, while I was living in Illinois, my mom handed me a copy of Edith Schaeffer’s The Hidden Art of Homemaking.[1] You will enjoy reading this, Mom said. She was right. The idea of hidden art—art which is found in the minor (ordinary) areas of life—resonated deeply with me. By the time I read Schaeffer’s book, in the mid 1990s, some parts were dated and even a bit quaint, but that didn’t deter me from hearing her message. Encountering God in my everyday life can begin at home? You mean stopping to notice a flower and appreciating its beauty can be an act of worship? This was new territory for me. Edith Schaeffer seamlessly integrated her faith into all areas of her life and this delighted me. She wrote about eating, gardening, walking, cooking, talking, and God all in the same mix. I loved it! Schaeffer’s writings gave me the permission I needed to think differently about my relationship with God, creation, and the ordinary parts of my life. I began to read others—Kathleen Norris, Wendell Berry, Eugene Peterson, and Dennis and Margie Haack—and to engage in conversations with friends who were living lives that integrated their everyday routines with their faith.

Twenty-some years later, I am still on my journey. My sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life continues to discover God’s active and real presence in my everyday life. This book is the story of that journey and what I have learned along the way. Maybe my stories will resonate deeply, and you’ll find yourself saying, Me too! Or maybe something I say will simply light a spark and you will discover ways to encounter God that look different from the ways that worked for me. One thing is certain: God reveals himself to each of us, often in surprising ways.

HOW TO READ THIS BOOK

This book is arranged topically, with each chapter divided into three sections. In the first section, I provide a definition and biblical framework for the topic. In the second section, I discuss why this topic is important. In the third section, I outline ways a person can encounter God, with practical suggestions and ideas. Though I recommend that you begin with chapter one, Encountering God in Creation, feel free to jump around and read the chapters in a way that suits you. At the end of each chapter, I provide questions for further reflection, along with additional reading resources. My hope is that you will find yourself coming back to this book again and again, underlining and marking passages as you continue to encounter our everywhere God in your ordinary moments.

CHAPTER ONE ENCOUNTERING GOD IN CREATION

Look at the stars! look, look up at the skies

O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air!

—Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Starlight Night[2]

Ifelt my breath catch in my throat. Below me, the city lights of Vancouver twinkled in the distance. The night air was crisp and cold. Above me, an explosion of stars scattered the nighttime sky. On either side of me, tall pine trees lined the ski slope. I couldn’t believe I was in this place, at this particular moment. How did a Midwest girl from Indiana end up in Vancouver, British Columbia, skiing with her husband and children on a Saturday night? Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that we could afford ski passes while Brad attended graduate school. But the ski mountain offered an incredible deal for season passes and Vancouver boasted a large number of consignment ski shops, and so we managed, this once, to squeeze skiing into our budget.

So here we were. Having the time of our lives. Pausing for a moment before heading down the run, I thanked God for his creation and this experience—for the brilliant stars and for the cold, pristine air. A part of me recognized that this was a sacred moment and I wanted to sear the image of the surrounding beauty into my mind so that I would never forget it.

Since that time, I have recalled that moment often. I encountered God that night on Grouse Mountain—in the crispness of the nighttime air, in the starry show overhead, and in the majestic pine trees surrounding me. The beauty and grandeur of that place filled me with praise and adoration for my Creator.

CREATION: WHAT IS IT?

All stories begin somewhere. For me, the creation story began with a sky blue flannel-graph board in Sunday school. Seated in a circle with my other Sunday school friends, I watched the story unfold. From an empty board, to the addition of a sun and a moon, to trees and flowers, to animals and Adam and Eve, I recognized that creation was the living, growing things all around me, created by the God of the universe. The zucchini, tomato, and cucumber plants that my parents planted in their garden each summer—God created them. The fig and pomegranate trees growing in my grandparent’s backyard—God created them. The Bluegill fish I caught in the pond beside my house—God created them.

It was in this same Sunday school circle that I learned about creation’s brokenness too. As a result of Adam and Eve’s disobedience in the garden, sin entered the picture, affecting the entire created realm. Later in the Sunday school year, I learned about Jesus, the Messiah, and realized the creation story wasn’t finished. Some day Christ would return and restore creation, making all things new. Not only that, but Christ would dwell with his people for all eternity.

As I advanced beyond the flannel-graph story of creation and grew into adulthood, Paul’s words in Romans 8:22–23, where he says we long and groan for the redemption of our bodies and creation, echoed my own experience, my own body. From stretch marks to brown spots to a bum left big toe, my physical body reflects brokenness, minimal as it may be. As I matured and paid more attention to the world around me, I saw creation at large suffering too.

The headlines constantly remind us of the fragile state of God’s creation. From droughts to fires, from hurricanes to floods, everything experiences the effects of the Fall. But rather than despair over this situation, there is hope: Christ promises us a new creation someday. In Revelation 21, John tells us, Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away....‘the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them’. It will be a perfect creation.

CREATION: WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?

WHY DOES THIS UNDERSTANDING of creation matter? Think of how we build relationships. We don’t start by sharing our deepest longings with another person. We start by learning a bit about the other person. Where are you from? What do you do? How do you spend your free time? These basics lay the foundation for the relationship. Over time, we learn more. Who has had the most impact your life? What makes you afraid? What are your dreams? Every time we walk out the door or look out the window we see some element of creation—a bird, a flower, a tree, a bit of grass. Creation is one of the most obvious things to notice about God. This recognition serves as a starting point for deepening our relationship with Christ and reveals attributes of God’s character.

CREATION EXEMPLIFIES ORDER AND BEAUTY

WHEN MY CHILDREN WERE little and they wanted to paint, I had to overcome the part of myself that didn’t like messes. However, watching them excitedly jump up and down as they planned their next masterpiece, quickly put my neat-mom self in her proper place. As toddlers, their masterpieces often turned into brown blobs because they tried to mix too many colors together. As they grew and their fine-motor skills developed, real pictures emerged, showcasing brightly-colored birds, sharks, and houses. This desire to create and to place objects in a specific place—"Mommy, I want the sun to go here—speaks to the fact that we are made in God’s image. We reflect his attributes, including a desire for order and beauty. Read chapters 1 and 2 of Genesis and notice the way in which God creates. Day one: God creates the day and night. Day two: God separates the water from the sky. Each day follows an orderly progression. And creation isn’t just orderly; it’s beautiful. When God creates trees, the text specifically says these were trees that were pleasant to the sight (Gen. 2:9). God’s masterpiece," his created world, reflects order and beauty. This is a creation that never grows stale or outdated. Whether we are in our 30s or 80s, we continue to marvel at its beauty.

CREATION FOLLOWS A RHYTHM

FOR MOST OF MY LIFE, I have lived in places with four discernible seasons. Fall is my favorite, but as each season draws to a close, I find myself anticipating the next one. Each season contains some unique and delightful aspect. Spring means bulb flowers and asparagus; summer means basil and al fresco dining; fall means pumpkins and sweaters; winter means hearty stews and fires in the fireplace. Creation follows a rhythm, even in climates without noticeable season. The writer of Ecclesiastes says, The sun rises, and the sun goes down, and hastensto the place where it rises. The wind blows to the south and goes around to the north; around and around goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns (1:4–6).

Sometimes, the rhythms of creation surprise, even devastate us. In the fall of 2012, Hurricane Sandy swept across the northeastern seaboard of the United States, bringing terrible destruction. Power lines snapped like twigs, huge trees crashed to the ground, and hundreds of thousands of homes lost electricity and experienced flooding. And this was the second hurricane to hit our area within 15 months. In order to maintain a positive attitude, I told my family we would live like Laura Ingalls Wilder and her family in the 1800s. We rose with the sun each morning and went to bed when it was dark. We built fires in our fireplace to keep warm (we were fortunate to have another source of heat as many homes in our neighborhood were cold and dark). Slowly, we adjusted to having more darkness in the house than light. When our power was eventually restored and I could easily light a room with a